UAMS Psychiatry Chair to Speak at El Dorado Rotary Sept. 26

By todd

Sept. 23, 2005 |

LITTLE ROCK – G. Richard Smith, M.D., chairman of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, will speak to the El Dorado Rotary Club at noon, Sept. 26.

Smith, who holds the Marie Wilson Howells Endowed Chair in Psychiatry, will discuss the impact of mental illness on families, businesses and the community as well as the numerous new developments concerning psychiatry at UAMS. The club meets in the FirstBaptistChurch annex building on Main Street.

Smith, a Jonesboro native, received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemical biology from RhodesCollege in Memphis. He was a medical student, intern and resident at UAMS. Upon completion of his psychiatry and internal medicine fellowship at StrongMemorialHospital in Rochester, N.Y., in 1981, he returned to UAMS.

Smith developed several programs at UAMS, including the Centers for Mental Healthcare Research, the nation’s largest research group dedicated to mental health and substance abuse services research. Smith was founding director of the ArkansasCenter for Health Improvement and a leader in securing the state’s tobacco settlement to improve health care for Arkansans.

UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with five colleges, a graduate school, a medical center, five centers of excellence and a statewide network of regional centers. UAMS has more than 2,320students and 690 residents and is the state’s largest public employer with almost 9,000employees. UAMS and its affiliates have an economic impact in Arkansas of $4.3billion a year.